


A Waning Note Lifts A Love Song

by Curator



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Angst, Episode: s05e18 Course: Oblivion, M/M, but ours too, goo crew
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-10-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:08:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26994934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Curator/pseuds/Curator
Summary: Tom Paris has loved Harry Kim for a long time.Or has he?
Relationships: Harry Kim/Tom Paris
Comments: 16
Kudos: 25





	A Waning Note Lifts A Love Song

The first time he touches your hand, you know he plays an instrument. Your guess is piano, actually, and you twist in the bedsheets of your guest quarters, duffel bag slung in a corner with a padd inside that lists restrictions governing your temporary release from prison. 

No piloting.

But you tell yourself that doesn’t matter because you’re in space again, in motion, and you close your eyes and imagine strong hands with long fingers caressing you like the keys on a baby grand, scales and chords and love songs and —

You don’t know anything about music.

But you get to know him and the first time he plays his clarinet for you, he’s shy, black and silver between his fingers, delicate, as if the instrument and the man both know secrets of breath and touch to create harmony.

You look away when he plays, embarrassed that you don’t have the vocabulary to praise him, that your cheeks flush as his fingers shift along silvery bits of instrument, his lips pursed, cheeks tight. You drape yourself on his sofa because prison trained you to assert dominance, to gain control by claiming territory, by being suggestive and coarse — and you’ve lost sense of when you’ve made people uncomfortable, when you’ve gone too far.

You aren’t good enough for him.

So you tell him you love a woman you know you can’t have, a woman who is sweet and kind. But you hurt Neelix and let everyone down, of course. Time to move on, like you always do, but you’re stuck on this ship and you love it here and you hate it here and you find someone hard, someone to yell at you and tell you you’re wrong whether you are or not. 

It’s like home, like your little bedroom in San Francisco with someone disappointed in you on the other side of the door.

But when you try, really try, her tentative smile is pure and real, and that makes you a benefactor, a good person. Her rough edges smooth your rough edges — and things feel more right all the time with a knot of wrong that you push aside and try to forget.

You don’t look at him when he plays his clarinet at your wedding. 

Then she dies right in front of you, her cells unfurling, losing cohesion, dripping like the lies you used to tell at bars near Starfleet Academy when someone asked your last name.

You never wanted to be a Paris.

Turns out, you’re not.

You’re nothing, you’re silver blood, and everything you believed about yourself is fake, which is some sort of poetic justice, right? You faked your way through your whole damn life, everyone saying you had potential, that you could be someone important if you only tried hard enough. 

Well, they never said that to _you_.

You wonder about the real Tom Paris. 

Did he ever tell Harry how he feels?

Did he marry B’Elanna? 

If he did, was it because he’s a coward, like you?

You _hate_ the real Tom Paris.

It’s the middle of the night and you’re shaking with cold, but you chime at Harry’s door. You don’t give a shit that your cells are tearing apart, that this ship is doomed because the captain was too busy trying to be who she isn’t to recognize what she is. 

The door slides open.

He’s rumpled, blinking in light from the corridor, dark hair sticking up in tufts. 

“I,” you say, and you’re gasping for air, “I have always loved you.”

He’s holding you, arm around your back, bearing your weight as you become weightless, your body and mind separating, and you’re floating somewhere above yourself, and he says, “Let’s get you to sickbay.”

And you hear them, you hear the Doctor and Harry and you’re on a biobed, blanket pulled to your chest, not covering your face so they must think you’re still alive — the fools! — and Harry’s fingers are soft on your cheek and a whisper of breath warms what was your ear and he says, “I’ve loved you since the day we met … whatever that means anymore.”

And his lips touch yours and you become music, nothing and everything and the song is almost over but this is the best note of the ballad of your whole damn life and the last thing you do is kiss him back. 


End file.
